At least 85 percent of the employees hired by each of Macao’s six gaming concessionaires must be locals, Macao’s Secretary for Economy and Finance, Lei Wai Nong, said yesterday.
In remarks to lawmakers, quoted by gaming specialist publication Inside Asia Gaming (IAG), Lei stated that “the minimum standard for the proportion of local staff employed by each corporation is 85 percent.” He stressed that “this ratio is the minimum standard, not the maximum standard.”
In his comments, the secretary mentioned that under the terms of their 10-year concessions, the operators were obliged to “provide employment for Macao residents” and that they had “been actively promoting this aspect.”
[See more: Government zeroes in on companies unwilling to hire local staff]
Galaxy Entertainment, for instance, had recently set up a new employment program with the government, offering locals the opportunity to receive on the job training for various positions in the company.
Lei acknowledged that local employees were less inclined to accept certain positions “such as housekeepers and cleaners” and that the Labor Affairs Bureau would take this into account when considering migrant worker applications.
During the session, Lei also made reference to the unemployment rate among Macao residents, which stood at 2.9 percent between September and November 2023, according to the latest data from the Statistics and Census Service. Lei said that the figure would already be considered “full employment in many places”
